Penfriend is a well used piece of supportive writing software. It has three main features;

1. Predictive Typing
2. On-screen Keyboard
3. A Marked Text Reader

Prediction is potentially a very powerful way of supporting pupils. Originally tis technique was developed to However it does require support from someone lie a teacher, ANA, friend or family member.

Here are several things that can make the use of Penfriend prediction more effective

• Choose the starter Lexicon for the user carefully. There are several available which may be more suitable than the default one “default.lex”
• Try making the user’s first experience succeed by; asking him what he wants to type; typing it in; deleting the text. In this way user is bound to get a positive experience.
• The user has to get the first letters in a word correct. So if he thinks that ‘used’ is spelled ‘yoost’, Penfriend can predict ‘used’, even if he starts typing ‘used’. You need to add these words into the lexicon using the abbreviations options in the Lexicon Window

Make sure that the speech settings, the font size and colour are as you’d want them. If the user is a very poor speller, it might be an idea to turn off “Predict New Words”. In this way you can ‘approve’ new words – turn them into old words, which will be predicted, at the end of the session.

A lexicon only becomes useful to a user when it conactiens the words that he/she is going to need. One way to ensure this is to;

1. Go to a web page of appropriate material
2. Mark some text
3. Copy it to the clipboard – using [Ctrl] and [C]
4. Load up Penfriend and Select View -> Lexicon -> File-> Learn Clipboard.
   This should add all the new words found in the text to the clipboard.

Here are some useful links;

The CALL Centre, Edinburgh University has a document “Using Penfriend – Suggested Settings” that helps you make the best choices in setting up a lexicon; http://callcentre.education.ed.ac.uk/downloads/quickguides/wordprediction/penfriend.pdf

The Penfriend web-site is very useful. It has a list of features of features in Penfriend XP

http://www.penfriend.biz/products/pfxp.shtml

There are some video tutorials here; http://www.assist-it.org.uk/assets/content/penfriend_tutorials.html

In particular, tutorials 3 and 5 are recommended

Two last tips;

• If you are going to type in somethin that you do not want Penfriend to learn – a web address for example – minimise Penfriend – to prevent it learning.
• Sometimes Penfriend gets confused and stops predicting. Press [Enter] a couple of times and it will start predicting. Penfriend works best when text is being entered continuously and cannot cope with the text being edited. Minimise Penfriend when you are editing

Remember the address of this blog is; http://ictsan.edublogs.org

Just a reminder of the features of the clipboard in Windows. It can be used to copy and paste text or pictures within a document or between documents. This can include using text and pictures from a website in your own documents.

Here’s a useful, one page sheet of documentation that shows you how to do it.
www.educationict.org.uk/ictsan/docs/clipboard_in_windows.pdf